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Logitech Sees Big Upside in Huddle Rooms

Logitech (News - Alert) is the market share leader in both conference room cameras and webcams, and the company sees plenty of video collaboration runway left. That’s the word from Ziva Nissan, head of product management at Logitech, with whom I spoke earlier this month at TMC (News - Alert) Editors’ Day in Santa Clara, Calif.

One area in which Logitech seems ample opportunity, she said, is in equipping the world’s 40 million huddle rooms. Just 3 percent of those rooms are outfitted with video, she added. Logitech’s solutions are uniquely suited for huddle room situations given their affordability and fact that they employ plug-and-play hardware that the company suggests makes videoconferencing as easy as using a mouse. For example, Logitech offers the Conference Cam family, a line of all-in-one audio and video devices idea for use in large rooms or huddle rooms; users can employ these products along with their favorite devices and applications, Nissan said.

Of course, Logitech offers an array of products, some of which are also suitable for desktop use, and others which were designed with large conference rooms in mind. The company is also addressing the fact that more businesses are now creating open workspaces, said Nissan, adding that its solutions can address environment factors such as lighting (Logitech has technology that can sense if a room is light or dark, and its cameras can adjust to that) and noise.

The company’s technology can work with any other vendors’ solutions, added Nissan. They can be used with popular applications such as BlueJeans, Cisco Jabber, Skype (News - Alert) for Business, and Zoom. Logitech’s products can plug into any PC or Mac, work with any OS, and its devices are all plug and play, she said.

Logitech also addresses ease of use via its SmartDock solution. Based on the Microsoft (News - Alert) Surface Pro, this interface enables workers to walk into a conference room and instantly launch a video meeting with the tap of the screen. Employees can use it to quickly and easily view a directory, select meeting participants, start a call, and share content.

The partnership with Microsoft has been a great one for Logitech, said Nissan. Microsoft’s Lync experience was more tied to the conventional server-based approach to collaboration, Nissan added, but Skype for Business is now in the cloud, which makes it really ease to employ.